A Study of Head Acts and Perspectives on Request in CSAT

Abstract

This study investigates the different types of head acts and perspectives on request strategies in Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). The data on speech acts of request were selected from the scripts of listening and speaking items from five years of CSAT (2005-2009). Each test contains 17 items of speech activities: 12 listening items and 5 speaking items. The results show that most test items demonstrate an adequate reflection of head acts and perspectives of request strategies, while several items represent some deficiency in the reflection of some strategies. The deficiency partly comes from the lack of diversity in the frequency of head acts: performatives, hedged performatives, obligation, want statements, strong hints and mild hints. In the perspectives, most items represent `hearer oriented` strategies in most of tests. While some tests focus on `speaker oriented` and `speaker and hearer oriented` strategies, `impersonal` strategies hardly occur for all five years. Most items have equal occurrences between a speaker and a listener in the social situations, but social familarity is different depending on the types of items. This study suggests that test developers should consider various head acts and perspectives in CSAT.